BV  4211  .S6 

Smith,  Roland  Cotton,  1860 

1934. 
Preaching  as  a  fine  art 


PREACHING  AS  A  FINE  ART 


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THE    MACMILLAN    COMPANY 

NEW  YORK    •    BOSTON   •    CHICAGO   •    DAULAS 
ATLANTA    •    SAN  FRANCISCO 

MACMILLAN  &  CO.,  Limited 

LONDON    •    BOMBAY    •    CALCUTTA 
MELBOURNE 

THE  MACMILLAN  CO.  OP  CANADA,  Ltd. 

TORONTO 


PREACHING  AS  A 
FINE  ART 


BY  y 

ROLAND  COTTON  SMITH,  D.D. 

Rector  Emeritus,  St.  John's  Church,  Washington 


i^EtD   gorfe 
THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1922 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1922 
By  the  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 


Set  up  and  Printed.    Published  September,  1922 


To 
JOHN  COTTON  SMITH 

AND 

WILLIAM  OTIS  SMITH 

Praxiteles,  the  sculptor  of  old  time,  wrought  a 
delicate  image,  but  lifeless,  the  dumb  counterfeit 
of  beauty,  endowing  the  stone  with  form;  but  this 
Praxiteles  of  to-day,  creator  of  living  beings  by  his 
magic,  hath  molded  in  my  heart  love.  His  works 
are  better.  Since  he  has  transformed  no  stone  but 
the  spirit  of  the  mind,  graciously  may  he  mold 
my  character,  that  when  he  has  formed  It  he  may 
have  within  me  a  temple  of  love,  even  my  soul. 

Meleager. 


PREFACE 

These  lectures,  delivered  before  the  Faculty  and 
Students  of  Divinity  Schools  in  Alexandria,  Cam- 
bridge and  New  York,  have  grown  out  of  the  con- 
viction that  it  is  absolutely  unnecessary  for  any  ser- 
mon ever  to  be  dull  or  unconvincing. 

If  the  fault  were  with  the  man  we  might  lose  hope, 
but  every  preacher  has  within  him  the  power  to  move 
the  human  soul.  If  the  trouble  lay  in  the  message, 
we  might  well  despair,  but  the  message  wears  the 
same  glory  yesterday,  today  and  forever.  That  the 
fault  lies  in  the  method  gives  us  encouragement  and 
a  renewed  hope.  For  the  method  can  be  changed 
and  must  be  changed. 

My  friend  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  is  kind  enough  to 
think  that  I  have  pointed  out  the  right  method,  and 
is  helping  me  to  reach  a  larger  audience  by  means  of 
his  arresting  and  compelling  voice. 

Roland  Cotton  Smith. 


VI I 


CONTENTS 

Introduction  :  Gerald  Stanley  Lee  .      .  xi 

I.     The  Preacher  as  Artist  ....  3 

II.     The  Artist's  Tools     .....  24 


IX 


INTRODUCTION 

I  FIND  myself  actuated  by  two  feelings  in  this 
little  introductory  word  to  the  spirit  in  these  pages 
of  Roland  Cotton  Smith.  One  is  a  curious,  per- 
sistent, wayward  feeling  of  eulogy,  of  delighting  in 
something  that  has  been  taken  from  my  life,  some- 
thing that  I  would  recapture  if  I  only  could — that 
I  must  recapture  if  I  only  can — and  hand  on  to 
the  lives  of  others. 

The  other  feeling  is  a  feeling  that  has  grown  as 
I  began  to  write. 

The  first  feeling  I  have  of  Roland  Cotton  Smith 
is  one  of  companionship  with  thousands  of  other 
people  standing  in  line  at  the  doors  waiting  for  a 
chance  to  hear  him  in  that  quaint,  honest,  lovable 
old  church  in  Washington  opposite  the  White 
House.  There  comes  upon  me,  as  I  picture  the 
little  church  In  my  mind  without  him,  a  sense  of 
vanishing,  and  my  mind  sweeps  past  the  fact  that  I 
saw  him  yesterday  in  the  street,  into  a  deep  and 
poignant  regret  that  that  part  of  Washington  it 
was  to  me  on  a  Sunday  morning  to  stand  In  the 
porches  of  Saint  John's  and  pray  for  him  and  pray 
with  him  before  he  lifted  his  voice  to  his  people  and 
his  God,  Is  gone.  I  cannot  be  reconciled  to  it — to 
the  fact  that  the  strangers  who  will  read  his 
words  In  this  little  book  can  now  no  longer  go  and 
stand  as  I  have  stood  and  thousands  of  others  In 

xi 


xll  Introduction 

the  porches  of  Saint  John's  waiting  and  praying  and 
worshiping  with  Roland  Cotton  Smith  for  sixty 
minutes,  and  then  going  away  remembering  it  and 
worshiping  with  it  and  with  the  spirit  of  it,  Sunday 
morning  after  Sunday  morning,  many  years. 

So  here  I  am  in  the  act  (as  any  reader  can  see  for 
himself)  of  strangely,  perversely  from  sheer  glad- 
ness of  memory,  writing  of  a  glowing  man — a  man 
I  met  in  the  street  yesterday — a  man  who  may  be 
pouring  himself  out  to  me  to-morrow — as  if  he  were 
dead! 

And  all  because  next  Sunday  morning  in  Wash- 
ington, with  hundreds  of  others  in  the  Sunday  morn- 
ing sunshine  in  Lafayette  Square,  before  the  doors 
of  the  little  church  opposite  that  serene,  unconscious- 
looking  White  House,  forgetting  its  dreams  and 
fears  and  quarrels  and  memories  and  sins  behind 
the  gracious  trees,  I  shall  not  be  standing  waiting  in 
line  to  find  a  place  to  worship  God  and  to  delight  in 
the  glory  of  the  world,  with  the  soul  of  a  child  and 
with  the  voice  of  Roland  Cotton  Smith! 

I  know,  of  course,  that  I  ought  not  to  be  doing 
it — writing  a  eulogy  of  a  man — almost  an  obituary 
of  him,  almost  before  his  own  face;  but  the  sense 
that  the  artist  has,  the  sense  of  wanting  to  recapture 
and  to  hand  on  to  others,  of  being  unwilling  to  give 
up  and  to  lay  something  in  one's  life  forever  away, 
is  too  much  for  me.  To  a  man  who  perpetuates 
himself  in  literature,  the  tragic  and  baffling  silence 
of  the  soul  of  the  preacher,  when  the  mere  sound  of 
his  mere  voice  has  died  away,  seems  almost  an  act 
of  violence. 


Introduction  xlii 

However  high  and  pure  and  fine  it  may  be,  the 
sense  that  the  spirit  of  a  man,  in  all  its  rugged  in- 
tegrity, its  heaping  up  and  focusing  of  power  and 
of  delight,  has  become  or  is  going  to  become  a  vague 
glorious  mist  of  scattered  human  lives — that  it  shall 
never  be  gathered  into  itself  again  forever,  over- 
rides something  in  one's  mind  and  in  one's  heart. 
One  begins  wondering  if  it  is  as  necessary  as  it 
looks.  What  is  there  that  could  be  or  might  be 
done  in  the  way  of  exposing  ministers  to  other  min- 
isters, so  that  the  coal  of  fire  shall  be  lighted  directly 
from  the  coal  of  fire  and  the  succession  be  from 
preacher  to  preacher? 

This  is  a  thought  that  cannot  but  keep  coming 
back  to  one — especially  to  one  who  looks  forward, 
as  I  do,  to  the  destiny  of  the  Church  in  this  our  pres- 
ent day,  who  is  wistful  for  its  glory,  jealous  for  its 
prophets,  who  wants  to  see  the  doors  and  aisles  of 
churches  haunted  every  Sunday  with  the  voices  of 
the  serene  and  the  high  and  the  great,  so  that  the 
young  men  shall  look  up  to  them  and  flock  to  them, 
and  the  glory  of  the  Lord  shall  be  renewed  before 
the  youth  and  His  face  shine  upon  our  altars  I 

So  anyone  can  see  how  it  is.  This  mounting  up 
of  desire  and  memory  and  perhaps  a  little  fear, 
starts  one  writing  an  introduction  like  this  in  a  very 
unreconciled  and  partly  unreasonable  state  of  mind 
about  the  spoken  word  and  about  the  lives  and 
powers  of  the  men  who,  like  Roland  Cotton  Smith, 
give  themselves  whole-souled  to  the  profession  of 
professions. 

So  perhaps  my  reader  will  forgive  me  if — though 


xiv  Introduction 

I  meet  him  glowing  In  the  street  In  the  morning, 
though  I  find  him  exercising  to  the  full  before  my 
eyes  his  right  to  live — I  am  allowed  to  lose  my  sense 
of  humor,  draw  close  to  what  might  seem  a  kind 
of  glossed-over  obituary,  for  the  first  minute  or  so 
in  writing  of  a  man  who  has  been  to  me  for  years  a 
national  necessity  In  thinking  of  Washington,  the 
thought  of  whom  had  become  a  little  happy  island 
for  my  soul  in  the  National  Capital,  upon  whose 
mind  I  had  come  to  look — right  across  from  the 
President  so — as  a  kind  of  spiritual  wing  on  the 
White  House ! 

So  not  unnaturally  when  I  was  sitting  the  other 
day  under  a  tree  in  Gramercy  Park  with  a  big  en- 
velope in  my  hand  and  took  out  an  M.S.  fresh  from 
the  publishers  and  came  on  the  glowing  and  gracious 
words  of  this  little  book,  there  came  to  the  surface 
as  I  read,  a  new,  sudden  and  revealing  desire.  I 
saw  what  I  saw.  As  I  turned  page  after  page  I  saw 
the  little  porches  of  the  little  Saint  John's  expand, 
I  saw  many  thousands  of  people  standing  in  their 
hearts  with  me  in  the  porches  of  Saint  John's.  I 
saw  that  the  voice  that  had  become  a  part  of  the 
National  Capital  to  me  might  now  be  freed,  might 
now  go  forth,  might  now  become  a  part  of  the 
national  capital  of  the  spirit  of  a  nation. 

It  is  a  reassuring  and  fortifying  fact  for  the 
churches  of  this  land,  that  a  valid  voice  like  this, 
gracious  and  simple,  full  of  a  high  courage,  a  de- 
light in  God  and  a  happy  hope  for  all  mankind,  shall 
now  in  these  richer,  later  years,  in  Its  spirit  of  un- 


Introduction  xv 

quenchable  childllkeness  and  boundless  youth  and 
the  full  tide  of  its  powers,  be  more  generally  and 
widely  heard  than  it  could  be  heard  before. 

1  did  not  think  of  this  on  the  first  page.  I  merely 
thought  of  the  listening  young  men  at  Alexandria 
and  wanted  to  be  there.  Then  I  began  wanting  the 
young  men's  churches — the  ones  they  came  out  of 
— the  ones  they  were  going  to  preach  in,  to  be  there. 

Then  I  took  out  my  fountain  pen  and  a  bit  of 
paper  and  sitting  on  the  bench  under  the  big  tree 
with  Teddy  bears  and  nurses  and  children's  voices 
all  around,  I  began  making  these  vestibule  remarks 
to  the  soul  of  Roland  Cotton  Smith.  I  began  to 
see  that  the  words  that  were  spoken  to  the  young 
men  at  Alexandria  could  all  be  spoken  to  thousands 
of  others. 

I  like  to  think  that  in  the  impulse  that  led  him 
to  give  up  the  recurring  demands  and  cares  of  his 
parish  in  Washington,  he  has  but  freed  his  spirit  for 
being  a  missioner  to  the  churches  at  large,  that  the 
experience  I  have  had  in  going  about  from  church 
to  church  to  hear  him  in  New  York  is  one  people 
are  going  to  have  everywhere.  As  an  evangel — an 
evangel  relighting  and  rededicating  the  altars  of  a 
great  and  weary  and  troubled  church  there  goes 
forth  the  spirit  of  Roland  Cotton  Smith. 

I  see  him  continuing  the  vision  of  this  little  book 
— going  from  pulpit  to  pulpit  interpreting  a  great 
profession — interpreting  in  each  preacher's  pulpit 
each  preacher  to  his  own  people  and  interpreting 
the  people  to  their  preachers. 

Of  course  the  essential  idea  in  what  is  said  about 


XVI  Introduction 

preaching  In  these  pages  Is  one  that  Roland  Cotton 
Smith,  Hke  all  true  preachers,  Is  more  successful  In 
dramatizing  than  he  Is  In  expressing.  I  cannot  dis- 
entangle from  the  sound  of  a  voice  and  the  presence 
of  a  personality,  just  what  these  written  words  will 
bring  to  others,  but  It  has  come  to  me  as  a  most  re- 
freshing and  quickening  experience — this  Interpre- 
tation of  a  great  profession,  at  once  so  eloquent 
and  yet  so  dumb,  so  pointing  beyond  Itself,  so  full 
of  the  simple  speechlessness  and  hope  of  the  New 
Testament  and  of  little  children,  so  high  and  so  clear 
and  withal,  with  a  kind  of  stern  beauty  In  It  like  the 
mingling  of  a  boy-choir  and  of  the  voice  of  God! 
It  Is  indeed  good  to  the  heart  to  have  called  up 
before  one  in  the  nick  of  time.  In  this  great,  swift, 
tragic  moment  of  our  world,  this  all-believing,  all- 
claiming  conception — this  almost  redeeming  con- 
ception, half  tradition,  and  half  prayer,  of  what 
preaching  is  really  like. 

Gerald  Stanley  Lee. 


PREACHING  AS  A  FINE  ART 


Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 


THE  PREACHER  AS  ARTIST 

The  President  and  Faculty  of  this  school  at 
Alexandria  have  honored  me  by  their  Invitation  to 
speak  to  you.  One  so  honored  cannot  help  going 
back  In  thought  to  the  ancient  Alexandrian  school 
and  Its  rich  contribution  to  literature  and  the  arts. 
And  I  am  moved  by  what  Is  more  than  a  mere  coin- 
cidence of  names  to  speak  to  you  on  "Preaching  as  a 
Fine  Art."  Do  not  think  that  I  am  trying  to  bring 
coals  to  Newcastle,  or  ideas  to  Alexandria,  the 
mother  of  great  preachers;  I  have  come  to  help  to 
keep  alive  the  fine  traditions,  and  to  take  the  coals 
from  off  the  Altar  that  is  already  here,  to  touch 
your  lips  with  fire. 

Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art:  I  do  not  Intend  to  be 
trapped  Into  definitions.  Definitions,  as  a  rule,  con- 
fine, rather  than  define.  If  any  one  can  prove  to 
me  that,  strictly  speaking,  preaching  Is  not  a  fine 
art,  I  do  not  know  and  I  do  not  care.  I  am  using  the 
title  more  as  a  suggestion  than  as  an  argument.  If 
murder  can  be  considered  a  fine  art,  certainly  preach- 
ing may  put  in  Its  claim  to  the  same  consideration. 
If  it  is  not  one  of  the  sisters,  it  Is  a  first  cousin. 
And  the  preacher  has  much  to  learn  from  the  mas- 
ters of  the  arts. 


4  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

Like  the  sculptor  (for  sculpture  Is  the  first  of 
the  fine  arts  to  suggest  itself),  the  preacher  has  his 
vision,  his  material,  his  tools  and  his  creative  power. 
We  are  to  examine  this  process  and  find  out  what 
vision  and  material  and  tools  and  power  belong  to 
the  preacher. 

The  image  of  God  is  the  preacher's  vision,  the 
nature  of  man  is  the  preacher's  material,  the  sermon 
is  the  preacher's  tool,  and  the  Spirit  of  God  within 
him,  cooperating  with  his  spirit,  is  the  preacher's 
creative  power.  Preaching,  therefore,  is  the  crea- 
tion of  the  nature  of  man  into  the  image  of  God,  as 
expressed  in  the  person  of  Jesus  Christ,  by  means 
of  words  issuing  from  the  preacher's  inner  spirit. 
Now,  I  beg  you  to  accept  this  statement  and  not 
challenge  it  in  your  minds  and  we  will  see,  I  hope, 
what  it  means  later  on. 

If  the  nature  of  man  is  the  material  upon  which 
the  preacher  artist  works,  we  see  to  what  point  his 
artistry  and  skill  are  directed.  It  changes  our  con- 
ception of  the  sermon.  The  sermon  is  not  an  end, 
it  is  a  means!  It  is  not  the  material,  it  is  a  tool, 
but,  like  all  subordinate  things,  important  in  the 
great  scheme.  And  so  you  see  that  when  I  am 
speaking  of  preaching  as  a  fine  art,  I  am  not  think- 
ing primarily  of  the  sermon;  of  the  fine  art  of  writ- 
ing or  of  speaking;  of  the  art  of  constructing  sen- 
tences, of  the  art  which  lies  in  literature :  all  that  is 
subordinate  and  important,  but  after  all  it  is  but  the 
fashioning  and  the  polishing  of  the  tool  to  do  its 
perfect  work.  A  man  by  his  art  may  fashion  a 
sermon  into  the  finest  bit  of  literature;  he  may  de- 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  5 

liver  it  with  the  tongue  of  men  and  of  angels,  but 
if  that  is  all,  it  lies  a  beautiful  tool  within  his  im- 
potent hand.  That  is  not  what  we  mean  by  the 
fine  art  of  preaching. 

And  that  brings  us  to  a  fundamental  principle: 
The  responsibility  of  a  preacher  rests  not  in  the  giv- 
ing of  a  truth,  but  in  the  other  man's  reception  of 
the  truth.  A  preacher  cannot  say — here  is  the 
seed  of  the  truth  of  the  spirit  and  I  sow  it  broad- 
cast among  thorns  and  on  stony  ground  and  now 
and  then  on  good  soil,  and  my  responsibility  ends 
there.  That  is  just  where  his  responsibility  as  an 
artist  begins.  His  work  and  his  art  are  with  the 
stony  ground,  to  do  away  with  the  stones ;  to  rid  the 
soil  of  the  thorns;  to  create  good  soil. 

I  ask  you,  in  this  connection,  to  read  the  poem  Sir 
Galahad,  by  Edgar  Lee  Masters,  which  is  much 
too  long  to  quote,  and  to  read  all  of  him  if  you  wish 
to  be  a  preacher: 

"He  had  studied 
The  properties  of  soils  and  fertilizers 
And  when  he  heard  the  field  had  failed  to  raise 
Potatoes,  beans  and  wheat,  he  simply  said: 
There  are  other  things  to  raise;  the  question  is 
Whether  the  soil  is  suited  to  the  things 
He  tried  to  raise,  or  whether  it  needs  building. 
.   .   .  The  field  is  his,  he  said. 
Who  can  make  something  grow. 

And  so  this  field 
Of  waving  wheat  along  which  we  were  driving 
Was  just  the  very  field  the  scare-crow  man 
Had  failed  to  master." 


6  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

The  preacher  who  delivers  a  fine  sermon  and  finds 
fault  with  the  soil  of  the  human  heart  for  the  re- 
jection of  its  truth  is  a  scare-crow  man  and  has 
failed  miserably  in  his  art.  "The  field  is  his,  who 
can  make  something  grow." 

I  can,  perhaps,  open  the  subject  more  fully  by 
illustrating  what  has  already  been  said  by  showing 
what  I  myself  am  trying  to  do ! — at  the  same  time 
throwing  its  light  forward  on  what  we  are  going 
to  say. 

I  have  come  here  not  simply  to  talk  to  you  about 
preaching  but  to  make  you  preachers.  My  art,  if 
I  have  any,  does  not  consist  in  writing  and  deliver- 
ing two  lectures,  satisfied  if  I  can  put  some  truth 
into  more  or  less  good  form,  speaking  out  of  an 
experience  of  two  score  years,  leaving  you  to  take 
it  or  pass  it  by,  as  you  please.  My  art  consists  in 
taking  the  truth  out  of  my  own  experience  as  It  has 
been  revealed  to  me,  and  putting  it  in  such  a  form 
that  it  will  arrest  your  attention,  and  fix  Itself  in 
your  memory;  communicate  spirit;  open  your  eyes; 
unloose  your  tongue  and  make  you  preachers  of  the 
word  of  God.  And  so  these  talks  are  not  ends  in 
themselves  to  be  praised  or  condemned  for  their 
epigrams  or  ornaments.  They  are  as  nothing  and 
worse  than  nothing,  If  they  cannot  make  something 
grow.  If  I  cannot  make  you  better  preachers  by 
what  I  have  written,  I  have  failed.  And  so  in  my 
thought  of  what  I  am  to  say  to  you,  I  begin  with 
you.  In  one  way  I  do  not  know  any  of  you.  I 
cannot  tell  your  names,  but  In  a  deeper  sense  I  know 
you  well;  your  high  Ideals;  your  desire   to  make 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  7 

God's  ways  known  to  men,  to  make  this  world  a 
better  place  to  live  in.  I  know  of  your  dreams  in 
the  secret  places  of  your  heart,  of  what  you  are 
going  to  be  and  do.  Some  of  you  are  dull,  some 
brilliant.  Some  of  you  are  lazy,  some  industrious; 
but  whether  you  are  considered  dull  or  brilliant, 
lazy  or  industrious,  this  one  thing  I  know  about  you, 
and  upon  this  one  thing  I  build:  each  one  of  you 
can  be  a  great  preacher.  Each  one  of  you  can  be 
an  artist  to  fashion  the  nature  of  a  man  into  the 
likeness  of  Jesus  Christ  and  the  image  of  God.  It 
will  take  everything  that  is  in  you,  your  blood  and 
sinew.  You  will  have  to  toil  as  the  great  artists 
have  to  toil.  Nevertheless,  each  one  of  you  can  be 
a  great  preacher.  That  one  thing  I  know  and  upon 
that  I  build.  Each  one  of  you  has  a  spirit  more 
wonderful  and  powerful  than  you  ever  dream  of. 
And  it  can  be  moved  by  the  spirit  of  God  and  you 
become  a  creator  among  the  things  of  the  spirit 
of  man. 

I  also  know  many  things  about  you.  You  have 
crude  and  wrong  notions  about  preaching.  You 
think  that  if  you  can  write  a  good  sermon,  that  if 
your  thought  is  good,  your  sentences  correct,  and 
the  literary  form  fine,  and  if  you  will  also  take 
lessons  in  elocution  and  master  your  delivery,  you 
will  be  a  good  preacher.  Whereas  in  reality,  you 
have  only  fashioned  your  tools. 

Now,  all  this  I  know  about  you,  and  I  must  put 
my  talk  in  such  a  form  that  you  will  realize  it.  My 
responsibility  does  not  end  when  I  have  told  you  in 
so   many  words   that   each    one   of  you   can  be    a 


8  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

preacher.  I  must  so  use  my  tool  that  It  will  engrave 
the  truth  upon  your  mind  and  heart,  and  start  eter- 
nal forces  at  work  that  will  make  you  a  preacher. 
And  so,  if  I  am  not  skillful  in  fashioning  my 
tool,  I  ought  to  be,  only  polishing  it  when  it  needs 
polishing,  sharpening  it  at  the  point  where  it  cuts, 
leaving  out  everything  superfluous,  constructing  my 
tool  for  the  one  purpose  of  opening  your  eyes. 

But  the  process  is  far  more  subtle  than  that. 
Words  are  easily  misunderstood.  They  often  con- 
vey an  opposite  meaning.  I  come  to  you  out  of  a 
long  experience.  Behind  all  my  word  there  ought  to 
be — and  if  there  is  not,  it  is  of  no  value — an  un- 
heard communication  of  my  spirit  with  your  spirit. 
Just  in  proportion  as  I  am  untrue  and  false  in  myself 
the  spirit  will  not  go  out  of  me.  If  I  am  insincere, 
if  I  speak  of  that  which  I  do  not  know,  and  tell  of 
things  I  have  not  seen,  I  shall  fail.  On  the  other 
hand,  if  I  am  true  and  not  false,  if  I  speak  of  the 
truth  which  I  have  seen  and  known,  of  the  things 
which  I  myself  have  handled,  my  spirit  will  go  out 
of  me,  even  ahead  of  my  words,  to  interpret  the 
words,  and  it  will  begin  in  subtle  and  unseen  ways 
to  mold  and  build  upon  your  spirit,  opening  your 
eyes,  stirring  your  will,  creating  in  you  the  power 
to  preach.  And  I  also  come  here  with  this  tremen- 
dous conviction,  that  while  thousands  can  do  it 
better,  no  one  else  in  the  whole  wide  world  can  do 
it  just  as  I  can  do  it.  God  has  given  me  a  certain 
experience.  I  see  truth  at  my  particular  angle.  My 
vision  is  unlike  anyone  else's  vision,  vouchsafed  to 
me  alone.     This  is  my  opportunity.     I  may  die  to- 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  '        9 

night  and  never  speak  again.  While  it  is  day  I  may 
have  something  given  me  by  God  that  may  make  you 
a  preacher.  Therefore,  this  is  not  a  quiet  lecture 
to  pass  away  the  time;  it  can  be  an  eternal  moment 
fraught  with  vast  possibilities.  Here  in  God's 
workroom  one  man  is  struggling  to  take  the  truth  as 
he  sees  it  and  build  it  into  the  nature  of  another  man. 
It  is  possible  that  out  of  the  struggle  some  great 
preacher  may  be  born.  That  spirit  of  adventure, 
with  the  possibility  that  at  any  moment  the  divine 
hand  will  guide  the  human  touch  and  create  a  mas- 
terpiece, is  the  life  and  the  joy  of  the  artist. 

I  have  used  what  I  am  trying  to  do  as  an  illus- 
tration of  what  a  preacher  ought  to  do;  to  throw 
light,  in  a  general  way,  upon  our  further  study  of 
preaching  as  a  fine  art. 

Of  course  you  may  say  to  me:  "You  are  speaking 
exactly  as  if  some  man  was  sitting  for  his  portrait, 
or  as  if  there  was  some  one  soul  constantly  in  your 
studio  upon  which  you  might  work  and  create. 
Whereas  the  preacher  has  to  do  with  natures  that 
come  and  go,  and  his  work  must  of  necessity  be  hap- 
hazard and  general."  That  is  so.  And  here  we 
strike  at  the  root  of  the  matter.  This  is  what 
makes  preaching  the  most  difficult  art  in  the  world. 
I  ask  you  to  read,  in  this  connection,  Matthew 
Arnold's  "Epilogue  to  Lessing's  Laocoon." 

"One  noon  as  through  Hyde  Park  we  walked 
My  friend  and  I,  by  chance  we  talked 
Of  Lessing's  famed  Laocoon 
And  after  we  a  while  had  gone 


10  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

On  Lessing's  track,  and  tried  to  see 
What  painting  is,  what  poetry 
Diverging  to  another  thought, 
'Ah,'  cries  my  friend,  'but  who  has  taught 
Why  music  and  the  other  arts 
Oftener  perform  aright  their  parts 
Than  poetry?     Why  she,  than  they 
Fewer  fine  successes  can  display? 
Profound  yet  touching,  sweet  yet  strong. 
Hath  used  Goethe's,  Wordsworth's  song. 
They  yield  us  not,  to  soothe  our  pains 
Such  multitude  of  heavenly  strains 
As  from  the  Kings  of  sound  are  blown 
Mozart,  Beethoven,  Mendelssohn.' 

"While  thus  my  friend  discoursed,  we  pass 
Out  of  the  path  and  take  the  grass. 
The  grass  had  still  the  green  of  May 
And  still  the  emblackened  elms  were  gay 
'Behold,'  I  said,  'the  painter's  sphere! 
The  limits  of  his  art  appear 
These,  or  much  greater  things,  but  caught 
Like  these,  and  in  one  aspect  brought 
In  outward  semblance  he  must  give 
A  moment's  life  of  things  that  live.' 

"Still  we  walked  on,  in  thoughtful  mood 
And  now,  upon  the  bridge  we  stood 
Full  of  sweet  breathings  was  *"he  air, 
Sound  as  of  wandering  breez.  — but  sound 
In  laws  by  human  artists  bound. 
'The  world  of  music,'  I  exclaimed: — 

'What  a  sphere 
Large  and  profound,  hath  genius  here. 
Some  source  of  feeling  he  must  choose 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  1 1 

And  its  locked  fount  of  beauty  use. 
And  through  the  stream  of  music  tell 
Its  else  unutterable  spell. 
To  choose  it  rightly  is  his  part, 
And  press  into  its  inmost  heart.' 

"Onward  we  moved,  and  reached  the  Ride 

Where  gaily  flows  the  human  tide. 

Men,  with  their  strain  of  life,  were  here 

The  young,  the  happy,  and  the  fair 

The  old,  the  sad,  the  worn,  were  there; 

Nods,  smiles  and  greetings  and  farewell 

And  now  and  then,  perhaps  there  swells 

A  sigh,  a  tear,  but  in  the  throng 

All  changes  fast,  and  hies  along, 

Hies,  ah  from  whence,  what  native  ground? 

And  to  what  goal,  what  ending  bound? 

'Behold,  at  last,  the  poet's  sphere! 

But  who,'  I  said,  'suffices  here?' 

'For,  ah,  so  much  he  has  to  do; 

Be  painter  and  musician  too! 

But  clear  as  words  can  make  revealing 

And  deep  as  words  can  follow  feeling 

But  ah!  then  comes  his  sorest  spell 

Of  toil — he  must  life's  movement  tell!' 

"The  thread  which  binds  it  all  in  one, 

And  not  its  separate  parts  alone. 

Its  pain  and  pleasure,  rest  and  strife 

His  eye  must  travel  down  at  full, 

The  long,  unpausing  spectacle 

With  faithful  and  relaxing  force 

Attend  it  from  its  primal  source 

From  change  to  change  and  year  to  year 

Attend  it  of  its  mid  career, 


12  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

Attend  it  to  the  last  repose 
And  solemn  silence  of  its  close. 

"Only  a  few  the  life-stream's  shore 

With  safe  unwandering  feet  explore, 

They  speak!  the  happiness  divine 

They  feel,  runs  o'er  in  every  line. 

Its  spell  is  round  them  like  a  shower 

It  gives  them  pathos,  gives  them  power. 

Beethoven,  Raphael,  cannot  reach 

The  charm  which  Homer,  Shakespeare  teach 

To  these,  to  these,  their  thankful  race 

Give,  then,  the  first,  the  fairest  place 

And  brightest  is  their  glory's  sheen 

For  greatest  hath  their  labour  been." 

Now,  preaching  is  a  greater  art  still.  It  has  to 
accomplish  even  more  than  poetry  does.  The 
preacher,  like  the  poet,  has  to  view  the  human  tide, 
that  endless  procession  of  human  beings,  passing 
"Ever,  ever,  like  a  river,"  he  must  life's  movement 
know.  But  in  addition  to  that,  the  preacher  not 
only  has,  like  the  poet,  to  tell  of  life's  movement — 
he  must  by  his  art  impress  life's  movement.  He 
does  not  draw  from  life  and  reproduce  it  in  words. 
He  uses  words  to  produce  life. 

Matthew  Arnold  might  have  added  another  verse 
to  his  "Epilogue  to  Lessing's  Laocoon,"  and  sung  in 
his  matchless  way  how  the  preacher  molds  the  indi- 
vidual nature  into  the  divine  image,  and  by  so  doing 
diverts  life's  movement  from  a  false  direction  and 
directs  life's  movement  into  the  right  way.  And  at 
the  end  he  would  have  had  to  give  the  preachers 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  13 

"the  first  the  fairest  place,"  but  he  could  not  have 
named  them  as  he  names  the  poets,  because  while 
the  poets  translatejife  mt(0  a  book  and  their  works 
follow  them,  preachers  translate  a  book  into  life, 
and  no  one  ever  sees  the  image  they  have  made. 
All  that  we  possess  of  the  so-called  Great  Preachers 
is  their  tools.  Good  tools,  no  doubt,  but  we  can 
never  know  how  they  used  them,  nor  look  upon 
their  creation  in  the  human  heart,  and  so  we  shall 
never  know  the  really  great  ones. 

I  have  dwelt  upon  this  poem,  and  I  wish  that 
you  would  read  it  over  and  over  again,  because  it 
starts  where  every  preacher  must  start,  at  "Life's 
movement,"  the  great  stream  of  humanity,  the 
crowd.  For  a  preacher  is  not  one  on  Sunday  when 
he  delivers  a  sermon,  or  on  Friday  and  Saturday 
when  he  prepares  it,  and  something  else  the  other 
days  of  the  week:  an  administrator,  a  pastor;  he  is 
a  preacher  all  the  days  and  every  day,  morning, 
noon  and  night.  He  is  a  preacher  all  the  time  or 
none  of  the  time.  Everything  he  sees,  every  book 
he  reads,  every  thought,  every  action  is  a  prepara- 
tion and  a  part  of  his  preaching.  As  an  artist  you 
ought  not  to  think  first  of  your  tool.  You  must 
know  what  you  are  going  to  do.  You  must  first 
see  the  divine  image  in  the  human  heart  and  know 
the  nature  of  the  stubborn  material  that  hides  it. 
And  so,  before  you  go  into  your  study  to  prepare 
a  sermon,  you  ought,  to  become  a  preacher,  to  go 
into  your  own  Hyde  Park !  You  ought  actually  to 
come  up  against  blind,  brutal,  bigoted,  glorious  hu- 
manity— and  have  the  crowd,  not  something  of  a 


14  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

crowd  but  a  crowd,  jostle  you  and  perhaps  hurt  you. 
You  ought  to  be  aware  of  some  actual  social  Injus- 
tice, social  wrongs,  and  social  abominations  that  will 
arouse  In  you  a  thorough  and  righteous  Indignation. 
The  first  thing  for  a  preacher  to  do  is  to  get  mad.  "^ 
I  am  not  saying  that  every  minister  who  leaves  his 
closet  and  mingles  with  the  crowd  Is  a  preacher;  he 
must  be  a  preacher  and  an  artist  before  he  goes 
into  the  crowd,  with  a  definite  idea  of  what  he  is 
going  to  do;  namely,  to  bring  out  the  Image  in  this 
stubborn  material,  just  as  the  sculptor  has  to  feel 
the  resistance  of  the  unyielding  rock.  Masefield, 
in  his  poem,  "The  Dauber,"  makes  the  artist  ship 
as  a  seaman  and  undergo  indignities,  and  battle 
with  the  storm  In  order  to  catch  the  different  shades 
of  color  In  the  wave.  Every  one  who  ships  as  a 
seaman  will  not  find  the  color  in  the  storm.  He 
who  does  must  be  an  artist  before  he  starts  his 
voyage.  In  this  connection  I  ask  you  to  read  Mase- 
field's  poem  of  "The  Dauber,"  in  order  to  catch  the 
spirit  that  every  preacher  ought  to  have  when  he 
begins  to  wrestle  with  his  task. 

If  a  preacher  will  face  humanity  in  the  spirit  of 
an  artist,  he  will  realize  that  this  great  mass  can  be 
separated  into  individual  blocks,  that  humanity  Is 
made  up  of  Individuals;  that  you  enter  humanity 
through  the  individual;  that  any  one  person  has 
within  himself  the  qualities  of  the  mass  of  humanity. 
And  so  a  preacher  who  is  preparing  a  sermon  ought 
to  have  some  one  person  In  mind,  as  the  sculptor 
chooses  his  block.  I  do  not  want  to  stress  the  figure 
of  the  sculptor  too  much.     It  Is  not  a  perfect  anal- 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  15 

ogy.  It  is  only  meant  to  help  and  not  to  hinder. 
The  sculptor  creates  his  image  out  of  that  one  block; 
the  preacher  may  draw  out  the  image  in  some  person 
other  than  the  one  he  has  chosen.  Nevertheless, 
it  makes  for  efficiency  if  the  preacher  has  one  person 
in  mind,  and  thinks  of  him  as  if  he  was  actually  in 
his  work-room.  If  you  can  reach  one  man  you  can 
reach  all  men. 

For  here  is  the  image  of  God  within  a  man.  It 
is  blind  and  what  you  want  to  do  is  to  make  that 
image  see!  That  is  what  all  preaching  is  for,  to 
make  a  soul  see.  Not  first  of  all  to  make  a  man 
good;  that  is  the  means  to  an  end,  and  the  end  is 
seeing;  seeing  God — seeing  spiritual  things.  Here 
is  a  man  who  cannot  see  because  of  his  sorrow  or 
his  sin.  It  does  not  matter  what  prevents  the  nor- 
mal action.  If  a  preacher,  for  instance,  will  pre- 
pare his  sermon  as  if  a  man  in  sorrow  was  in  his 
work-room,  if  he  can  make  that  man  see,  he  will 
comfort  that  man's  sorrow.  And  at  the  same  time 
he  may  make  some  other  man  see  and  take  away 
some  other  man's  sin. 

This  is  the  conclusion  of  this  particular  matter : — 
Before  you  prepare  your  sermon,  go  into  a  crowd 
and  be  hurt  by  it.  Know  that  this  crowd  is  made 
up  of  individuals,  choose  some  one  suffering  person 
whom  you  know  about.  Have  that  one  person  con- 
stantly in  mind,  as  if  he  was  in  your  work-shop,  and 
work  to  make  him  see.  And  you  will  prepare  a 
sermon  that  can  reach  all  the  sons  of  men.  Keep 
that  one  thing  in  mind — you  want  that  one  man 
to  see. 


1 6  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

I  have  been  speaking  as  if  an  artist  could  start 
work  on  his  block  of  marble  before  he  saw  in  his 
imagination  the  image  that  was  within  it,  as  if  a 
preacher  could  approach  an  individual  before  he 
knew  what  was  hidden  within  the  nature  of  that 
individual.  That  was  only  for  convenience.  Of 
course  a  preacher  must  start  with  an  overpowering 
conviction  that  every  man  born  into  this  world  is 
stamped  with  the  divine  image.  More  than  that, 
the  preacher  as  an  artist  must  know  what  that  divine 
image  is,  he  must  be  able  to  see  it  in  every  man.  He 
must  be  able  to  see  it  in  every  man  because  he  has 
found  it  in  himself.  This  is  quite  a  different  thing 
from  reading  in  the  Book  of  Genesis  that  God  made 
man  in  His  own  image  and  accepting  it  as  a  truth 
to  be  passed  on  to  other  men.  The  artist  preacher 
must  have  a  definite  realization  of  what  the  image 
of  God  is.  "God  is  a  spirit."  The  artist  must  be 
aware  of  a  spirit  within  himself.  "God  is  love." 
The  artist  must  know  in  himself  what  love  is.  I 
am  not  attempting  to  define  or  describe  God.  I 
am  saying  that  whatever  the  nature  of  God  may  be, 
the  artist  must  find  the  same  qualities  within  him- 
self; living,  loving,  even  as  God  lives  and  loves. 
Finding  it  in  himself  the  artist  will  inevitably  find 
it  in  his  fellow  men.  It  is  no  theory,  it  is  not  an 
idea:  it  is  the  actual  discovery  of  God's  character  in 
the  nature  of  every  man.  No  matter  how  low  down 
a  man  may  be,  no  matter  how  encrusting  and  resist- 
ing may  be  the  material,  somewhere  down  in  the 
dark  of  his  nature  is  the  image  of  his  God.  Now 
that   conviction   must   become   instinctive   with    the 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  17 

preacher.  When  he  is  hurt  by  the  mob,  when  he 
is  wofully  disappointed  in  the  individual,  always 
there  must  be  that  image  of  God,  that  likeness  of 
Christ,  coming  out  to  him  from  the  suffocating  ma- 
terial. And  I  think  it  a  good  plan  for  the  preacher 
at  first  to  say  to  himself  when  he  meets  any  man: 
"Within  that  man  is  the  divine  image.  Hail !  That 
which  is  born  in  you  is  the  likeness  of  the  son  of 
God,"  until  it  becomes  an  instinct  to  find  it  so. 

The  preacher  cannot  have  the  half-vision,  seeing 
"men  as  trees  walking."  A  man  is  not  a  tree.  A 
man  is  not  an  animal.  He  may  so  live  that  the 
life  of  the  tree  shames  him;  he  may  fall  below  the 
life  of  a  dog;  but,  unlike  the  tree  and  the  dog,  the 
man  has  within  him  the  capacity  for  seeing.  In 
meeting  any  man  the  artist  comes  to  his  own. 
Therefore  the  artist  preacher  approaches  an  indi- 
vidual not  primarily  because  he  is  bad,  but  because 
fundamentally  he  is  good.  He  comes  to  his  own. 
Coming  to  it  in  that  way  the  artist  will  discover 
that  he  does  not  bring  faith  to  that  nature.  He 
finds  faith  there  and  builds  upon  it.  Every  man  has 
faith,  the  entrance  into  and  appropriation  of  the 
unseen  spiritual  world.  As  every  man  lives  by 
breathing,  so  every  man  lives  by  faith,  and  cannot 
live  a  moment  in  this  world  without  it.  The 
preacher  artist  does  not  bring  to  a  man's  nature 
the  capacity  for  prayer;  he  finds  a  praying  man, 
for  every  man  prays.  Every  man  is  in  communica- 
tion with  the  spiritual  world.  His  spirit  speaks  and 
his  spirit  is  answered. 

Here,  then,  is  this  man  in  your  work-room,  and, 


1 8  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

let  us  say,  he  is  as  spiritually  blind  as  it  is  possible  for 
a  man  to  be.  He  has  faith  and  he  prays,  without 
knowing  it.  And  your  work  as  an  artist  Is  to  make 
the  man's  true  nature  assert  Itself  and  take  pos- 
session of  the  man.  Here  within  yourself  is  the 
power  to  do  it.  If  properly  connected  with  the 
supreme  power,  and  exercised  In  the  right  way,  the 
seeing  spirit  within  you  will  in  some  way  be  com- 
municated to  him. 

The  artist  preacher  must  have  the  seeing  spirit. 
I  am  not  saying  merely  that  the  preacher  must  be 
a  good  man,  that  he  must  practice  what  he  preaches 
in  order  to  be  an  example  to  his  flock;  that  he  must 
say  to  himself — "I  must  not  do  this  and  that  because 
I  will  lose  my  influence  as  a  preacher."  What  I 
am  saying  has  nothing  to  do  with  that  sort  of  thing. 
I  am  saying  that  the  artist  must  practice  before  he 
can  preach.  Words  convey  a  meaning,  not  only 
intellectual  but  spiritual.  The  preacher  deals  with 
spiritual  values  and  his  words  must  be  freighted 
with  those  values.  And  if  his  words  are  to  be 
freighted  with  spiritual  values  the  artist  must  be 
spiritual. 

It  is  not  that  you  must  practice  what  you  preach, 
you  have  to  preach  what  you  practice.  There 
is  no  question  about  it;  It  is  a  scientific  propo- 
sition. The  word  goes  from  you  empty  unless  you 
yourself  fill  it  with  your  own  spirit.  It  is  as  if  a 
musician  should  say:  "Here  is  my  instrument  and 
I  want  it  to  produce  music,  and  I  will  play  my  fingers 
upon  the  several  stops!"  It  will  not  make  music  v 
until  the  artist  breathes  his  own  breath  Into  the  in- 


I 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  19 

strument.  Here  is  the  nature  of  man  and  I  want 
it  to  produce  music  and  I  play  upon  it  with  words. 
And  the  music  does  not  come  and  will  not  come 
until  the  instrument  catches  the  breath  of  the  life 
of  the  spirit  that  issues  from  my  soul.  You  may  be 
a  great  orator,  you  may  be  a  fine  sermonizer,  but 
you  cannot  be  a  preacher  unless  you  are  a  spiritual 
being  close  to  your  God.  And,  therefore,  the  artist 
preacher  of  necessity  goes  into  his  closet  and  shuts 
his  door  and  communes  with  his  Father  which  is  in 
secret,  so  that  he  may  be  able  to  see  the  divine 
image  in  every  man  and  to  have  the  power  to  make 
the  man  see.  This  is  the  conclusion  of  this  par- 
ticular matter : — If  you  are  to  be  an  artist  preacher 
you  must  be  a  spiritual  being  very  close  to  your  God. 
This  is  the  last  point  in  the  preparation  for 
preaching  that  we  shall  dwell  upon  in  this  first  lec- 
ture. Before  we  close  let  us  go  over  what  we  have 
done.  If  you  are  in  a  critical  mood  you  may  say 
to  yourself  that  I  have  not  proved  my  thesis,  that 
preaching  is  not  a  fine  art.  I  reply  that  I  have  had 
no  thesis.  I  have  not  tried  to  prove  that  preaching 
is  a  fine  art.  You  may  say  that  I  have  tried  to  be 
original  and  that  really  I  have  not  said  anything 
that  has  not  been  said  before.  I  have  not  tried  to 
be  original.  I  have  simply  stated  the  matter  as  I 
have  found  it  in  my  own  experience  and  I  am  well 
aware  that  I  have  merely  stated  the  obvious.  I 
have  stated  a  number  of  things  tentatively  which 
probably  will  not  bear  analysis,  but  they  can  be 
brushed  aside,  for  they  have  nothing  to  do  with  my 
main  contention.     Let  us,  therefore,  for  a  moment 


20  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

lose  sight  of  the  artist,  strip  the  subject  and  get 
down  to  the  stark,  naked  truth,  the  bare,  unem- 
bellished  facts.  You  are  men  preparing  to  be 
preachers.  If  you  have  had  thoughts  that  the  prep- 
aration for  preaching  was  the  preparation  of  the 
sermon,  you  have  been  mistaken.  But  if  you  have 
always  looked  at  a  sermon  as  a  means,  not  an  end, 
you  have  gone  a  long  way  in  your  preparation,  for 
you  have  gone  farther  than  have  many  so-called 
preachers  who  are  much  older  than  you.  For  if 
you  have  a  clear  idea  that  the  sermon  is  not  an  end 
but  a  means,  you  will  have  gone  far  in  the  grasping 
of  the  fundamental  principle  that  your  responsibil- 
ity does  not  end  with  the  giving  of  truth  but  in  the 
other  man's  reception  of  It. 

The  whole  emphasis  is  transferred  from  the  ser- 
mon to  the  man.  When  you  approach  the  man  and 
not  the  sermon  you  find  that  your  work  consists 
not  in  making  sentences  but  in  making  men.  You 
are  not  only  translating  thought  and  life  into  words 
but  you  have  also  to  translate  words  back  again 
into  life.  And  that  is  the  most  difficult  thing  in 
the  world  to  do.  When  you  have  fastened  your 
attention  on  the  nature  of  man.  Instead  of  on 
the  construction  of  a  sermon,  you  are  bound  to  come 
face  to  face  with  a  blind,  stumbling,  falling,  ris- 
ing humanity,  ever  changing,  ever  moving — a  peo- 
ple that  laugh  and  cry  and  bless  and  hurt,  a  world 
of  men  full  of  injustice  and  abominations.  And 
you  as  a  preacher,  not  as  something  else,  not  as 
a  reformer,  a  social  worker,  a  pastor,  but  as  a 
preacher,  before  you  can  preach  at  all  must  face 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  21 

it  and  not  deny  the  existence  of  the  abominations 
as    the   manner    of    some    is.     You   must    not   go 
round  it  with   an   easy-going,   cheerful   and  vapid 
philosophy.     You  as  a  preacher  have  to  go  through 
it,  stunned  and  appalled  and  bruised,  moved  and 
righteously  angered  by  it.     You  must  then  grasp  the 
obvious  truth  that  humanity  is  made  up  of  indi- 
viduals.    More  than  that,  you  must  practice  the 
obvious  truth  that  humanity  is  made  up  of  indi- 
viduals.   If  we  are  going  to  have  humanity  at  peace, 
the  individual  has  to  be  peaceful.     That  obvious 
truth  is  hardly  recognized  to-day.     It  is  always  sup- 
posed that  a  preacher  sways  a  multitude  and  has 
little  to  do  with  the  individual  man.     The  preacher 
does  nothing  of  the  kind.     He  reaches  the  multitude 
through  the  individual,  or  he  does  not  reach  it  at 
all.     Therefore,   you,   if  you   are   going   to   be  a 
preacher,  must  reach  the  multitude  through  the  in- 
dividual man.     You  may  forget  all  I  have  said  about 
the  work-shop  and  about  imagining  some  man  in 
your  study  and  all  that  sort  of  thing.     If  it  does  not 
help  you,  throw  it  away.     You  have  a  perfect  right 
to  do  so.     But  you  cannot  get  away  from  the  fact 
that  you  can  sway  the  multitude  only  by  working 
upon  the  individual  man. 

I  have  now  laid  the  foundations  for  what  I  have 
further  to  say.  Before  we  close,  let  us  get  back 
to  the  idea  of  preaching  as  a  fine  art,  and  think  of 
Jesus  the  preacher,  as  the  consummate  artist,  and 
so  bind  these  two  lectures  together  with  His  pres- 
ence, a  summing  up  and  a  prophecy,  linking  what 


22  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

I  have  said  to-day  with  what  I  am  going  to  say 
to-morrow. 

Jesus,  the  artist,  was  a  preacher  all  the  time. 
He  preached  on  any  day  and  every  day  of  the  week,^ 
for  He  had  the  one  consuming  passion  of  the  artist 
— to  create.  Here,  within  the  nature  of  man  was 
a  divine  image,  hidden  within  the  darkness  of  the 
material;  here  within  Himself  was  the  image  see- 
ing, seeing  His  Father  God  and  the  whole  invisible 
world  within  and  about  the  visible.  Proceeding  out 
of  that  relationship  was  a  spirit  with  power  to  touch 
the  blinded  image  to  make  it  see.  So  Jesus,  the 
artist,  went  and  mingled  with  the  multitudes,  "re- 
joiced with  them  that  did  rejoice  and  wept  with 
them  that  wept."  He  flung  himself  with  a  divine 
fury  against  a  mountain  of  materialism,  bruised  and 
battered  by  the  resisting  stone  but  never  losing  the 
artist's  faith  that  He,  the  image  of  God,  was  in 
the  mountain  of  the  multitude.  This  mountain 
multitude  was  made  up  of  living  blocks.  And 
Jesus,  after  He  had  the  vision  of  the  perfect  image 
of  Himself  in  humanity,  addressed  Himself  not  to 
the  multitude  but  to  the  individual  person,  the  way 
of  entrance  into  the  whole  human  race.  He  cre- 
ated the  image  in  the  separate  block.  He  preached 
to  the  woman  of  Samaria,  to  Nicodemus,  and  to 
any  one  person  who  crossed  His  path.  And  He 
brought  all  the  truth  and  power  of  God  to  bear 
upon  that  one  image.  He  dealt  with  truth  con- 
cretely. 

He  spoke  of  faith  and  found  it  in  the  man  by  His 
side.     He  found  prayer  and  built  on  it  in  the  woman 


The  Preacher  as  Artist  23 

at  His  feet.  He  pointed  to  the  Kingdom  of 
Heaven  in  the  little  child.  He  left  the  multitude 
for  the  man,  as  the  only  way  to  help  the  multitude. 
He  was  apparently  indifferent  to  the  crowd,  know- 
ing full  well  the  emptiness  of  words  in  themselves 
and  appreciating  that  soil  has  to  be  prepared  before 
you  can  make  things  grow.  So  He  preached  to  the 
crowd  in  parables  that  seeing  they  might  not  see, 
and  hearing  they  might  not  understand,  saying  to 
the  mountain,  "Wait  until  I  have  created  the  image 
in  the  separate  stone." 

Jesus  took  a  few  men  out  of  the  mass  and 
preached  to  them  as  an  artist  must  preach.  He 
taught  them  by  making  them  teachers.  He  helped 
them  by  making  them  helpers.  He  gave  to  them 
by  making  them  givers.  He  forgave  them  by  mak- 
ing them  forgivers.  And  the  image  within  the  man 
grew,  breaking  through  the  resisting,  encrusting 
material,  out  into  the  Vision.  And  the  image  knew 
itself  the  image  of  its  God,  possessing  in  itself  a 
creative  instinct  and  a  redeeming  impulse  and  be- 
came endued  with  the  power  to  become  a  preacher, 
who  in  his  turn  throws  himself  with  passion  upon 
some  new  resisting  material  to  create  the  image 
there.  "Until  we  all  come  unto  a  perfect  man,  unto 
the  measure  of  the  stature  of  the  fulness  of  Christ 
and  the  image  of  God." 


II 


THE  artist's  tools 


We  have  seen  In  the  previous  lecture  that  the 
preacher's  work  is  so  to  mold  the  divine  Image 
within  the  nature  of  man  that  It  will  know  Itself 
alive  and  see.  In  order  to  do  that  the  preacher 
must  come  In  vital  touch  with  humanity — men  mov- 
ing. He  must  act  upon  his  knowledge  that  human- 
ity is  made  up  of  individuals,  and  he  must  see  with 
the  artist's  eye,  through  every  darkness  and  disap- 
pointment, this  divine  image  In  every  man.  In  order 
to  see  it  in  the  other  man,  it  must  be  alive  and  seeing 
in  himself,  with  power  to  transmit  Its  spirit  into  the 
other  man,  touching  the  sleeping  spirit  and  awaken- 
ing it  to  life. 

Thus  far,  it  might  be  said  that  we  have  described 
what  ought  properly  to  go  on  in  the  relation  of  man 
to  man.  Every  man  ought  to  influence  every  other 
man.  That  is  true.  But  I  have  called  attention 
to  it  specifically  as  the  preacher's  preparation  for  his 
preaching.  The  art  of  preaching  is  to  transmit 
spirit  and  influence  spirit  by  means  of  words.  But 
before  he  uses  words  the  preacher  must  prepare 
himself  for  their  use.  The  artist  is  an  artist  not 
only  when  he  sits  down  before  his  canvas  and  takes 
his  brush  in  hand,  or  before  his  marble  to  cut  the 
rebellious  stone.     He  is  an  artist  all  the  time;  dif- 

24 


The  Artisfs   Tools  25 

ferent  from  other  men  every  moment  of  his  life. 
Every  time  that  the  artist  looks  at  a  tree  or  a  sunset 
or  a  rock,  he  sees  with  an  artist's  eye,  and  it  is  prep- 
aration for  the  moment  when  his  hand  takes  up  the 
tool.  You  are  not  going  to  become  a  preacher 
when  you  begin  to  write  your  sermon  or  stand  in 
the  pulpit;  you  are  a  preacher  every  moment  of  the 
time  that  you  are  jostled  by  the  crowd,  or  look  into 
the  face  of  men.  Your  attitude  toward  the  mul- 
titude and  the  individual  is  different  from  the  at- 
titude of  other  men,  because  you  are  to  use  your  ex- 
perience in  a  different  way. 

But  as  an  artist  you  cannot  yet  take  up  your  tools, 
for  if  preaching  is  the  art  of  transmitting  spirit, 
of  influencing  and  molding  spirit  by  means  of  words, 
the  preacher  must  know  as  much  as  he  can  of  the 
spiritual  world  which  he  is  to  describe  in  words. 
And  so  the  preacher  must  be  able  to  express  and 
describe  in  words  that  spirit  of  which  man's  nature 
is  an  image;  he  must  know  the  spiritual  world — 
its  geography,  its  constitution,  its  laws,  principles, 
and  its  inhabitants.  This  spiritual  world  is  not 
some  place  where  men  may  sometime  go;  it  is  a 
world  where  all  men  live.  The  work  of  the  artist 
preacher  is  not  to  prove  the  existence  of  such  a 
world,  before  man's  acceptance  of  it,  to  get  men  to 
emigrate  thither;  it  is  to  open  men's  eyes  to  see 
where  they  are  already  living. 

The  preacher  finds  himself  in  possession  of  doc- 
trines and  dogmas  and  creeds;  the  nature  of  this 
spiritual  world  has  been  revealed.  The  revelation 
can  be  found  in  a  book.     The  book  tells  of  the  rela- 


26  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

tlonship  of  God,  the  creator,  and  Christ,  the  revealer 
and  savior,  and  the  operation  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
which  proceeds  out  of  that  relationship.  Now, 
what  Is  the  preacher  going  to  do?  Is  he  going  to 
deliver  the  substance  of  this  revelation  In  so  many 
words,  and  address  It  to  the  other  man's  under- 
standing, trusting,  if  the  man  understands  and  ac- 
cepts the  doctrine  intellectually,  that  It  will  affect 
the  Image  hidden  within  and  open  the  eyes  of  the 
man's  soul,  saying  to  himself  "what  a  man  thinks 
that  he  is,"  and  thinking  to  himself  that  that  means 
he  is  Intellectual?  The  preacher,  if  he  Is  an  artist 
with  any  realization  of  his  responsibility.  If  he  has 
any  vision  of  the  Image  hidden  in  the  other  man, 
if  he  Is  conscious  of  the  Image  of  God  In  him- 
self, will  do  nothing  of  the  kind.  That  Is  begin- 
ning at  the  wrong  end.  It  is  true,  everlastingly 
true,  that  ''what  a  man  thinks  that  he  Is."  Doc- 
trines and  creeds  are  essential  to  living,  but  begin 
with  a  doctrine  and  you  begin  at  the  wrong  end. 
"What  a  man  thinks  that  he  is,"  Is  true,  because 
of  the  prior  truth  that  what  a  man  Is,  that  he  thinks. 
These  doctrines  that  a  preacher  finds  in  his  posses- 
sion, what  are  they  but  the  declarations  of  what 
men  have  found  in  life  in  the  spiritual  world.  They 
have  grown  out  of  living.  Doctrines  and  creeds 
are  the  signals  flying  over  the  spiritual  world,  tell- 
ing a  man  what  he  is  to  find  there  for  himself,  and 
he  cannot  enter  into  the  meaning  of  the  signal,  or 
doctrine,  until  he  himself  has  gone  down  deep  into 
spiritual  experience  and  found  what  the  signal  has 
told  him  he  would  find.      Man  is  ever  sensitive  to 


The  Artist's   Tools  27 

spiritual  impressions.  Out  of  experience  he  col- 
lects spiritual  facts,  through  a  faculty  of  his  nature 
which  we  call  faith.  All  the  time  his  mind  is  reg- 
istering and  classifying  these  spiritual  facts  or  truths 
and  forming  them  into  a  doctrine.  Every  man  has 
a  doctrine  of  this  kind,  his  mind's  recognition  and 
cla^iication  of  those  impressions. 

hat  I  am  trying  to  say  is  that  seeing  spiritual 
ings  comes  first  and  does  not  grow  out  of  doc- 
trine but  doctrine  out  of  seeing.  You  have  to  see 
before  you  can  speak.  Therefore,  the  artist 
preacher  cannot  be  content  with  taking  doctrines,  no 
matter  how  true  they  are,  approaching  and 
appealing  to  the  mind  of  the  other  man.  That 
kind  of  speaking  will  never  pass  on  from  the  mind 
to  affect  the  hidden  image  within.  All  that  is  easy 
but  ineffective  and  has  gone  under  the  name  of 
preaching  for  many  generations.  Do  you,  then,  not 
believe  in  intellectual  preaching?  Certainly  I  do. 
In  more  intellect  than  most  of  us  have.  But  in- 
tellectual preaching  does  not  consist  in  learning  and 
putting  forth  a  set  of  doctrines  with  intent  to  gain 
the  assent  of  another  mind.  Intellectual  preaching 
is  the  expression  of  a  trained  mind  that  has  exam- 
ined actual  spiritual  experiences  in  his  own  nature 
and  in  the  nature  of  others,  classifying  them,  co- 
ordinating them  and  valuing  them.  And  so,  as  I 
have  said  before,  if  preaching  is  to  be  a  fine  art,  if 
it  is  to  make  the  image  hidden  within  see,  the  artist 
must  be  a  master  of  the  laws  and  principles  of 
the  spiritual  world,  experienced  in  his  own  life. 
And  that  calls  for  the  keenest  mind,  fastened  upon 


28  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

the   deepest  living,  with   the  utmost  consecration. 

It  is  very  hard  to  be  an  artist.  The  revelation 
of  God  and  the  laws  and  principles  of  the  spiritual 
life,  how  did  they  come  to  man?  Were  they  writ- 
ten across  the  heavens?  No.  Were  they  first 
written  in  a  book?  No.  Were  they  addressed  in 
logical  terms  to  the  human  mind?  No.  They 
were  written  in  the  blood  of  human  experience,  cul- 
minating in  the  blood  of  the  Son  of  Man,  and  after- 
wards translated  into  words  in  books,  and  in  The 
Book.  And  the  artist,  before  ever  he  takes  up  his 
tools,  has  to  translate  those  words  that  are  in  books 
back  into  human  experience,  back  into  his  own  ex- 
perience. "Man  is  made  in  the  image  of  God." 
That  is  the  artist's  starting  point.  It  states  the 
case  in  so  many  words.  What  is  the  artist  going  to 
do  with  it?  Is  he  to  pass  those  words  on  to  some 
other  man?  Not  if  he  is  an  artist.  These  words 
are  on  a  sign  post,  pointing  down  into  the  deep 
world  of  the  spirit,  telling  what  human  experience 
has  found  there  and  pointing  the  way.  He,  the 
artist,  is  made  in  the  image  of  God.  Well  then, 
of  what  nature  is  the  God  in  whose  image  he  is? 

Now  I  am  not  writing  a  treatise  on  theology.  I 
am  pointing  out  what  the  artist  has  to  do,  and  I 
merely  take  an  illustration  true  of  his  whole  method. 
This  God,  in  whose  image  the  artist  is,  so  loved  the 
world  that  He  gave  His  only  begotten  son,  that 
whosoever  believeth  in  Him  should  not  perish  but 
have  everlasting  life.  "This  God,"  says  the  guide 
post,  "loves."  Then  the  God-image  within  the 
artist  loves.     But  it  is  not  sufficient  for  the  artist 


The  Artist's   Tools  29 

simply  to  be  told  that  the  God-Image  hidden  within 
him  loves.  To  find  out  what  love  Is,  he  must  love 
as  God  loves.  He  does  not  receive  the  truth  just 
by  knowing  with  his  mind  that  God  loves  him,  or 
that  somebody  else  loves  him.  He  must  have  the 
love  that  God  has,  a  suffering  love,  a  giving  and  a 
forgiving  love.  God  Is  merciful.  It  Is  not  suffi- 
cient for  the  artist  to  know  that  God  is  merciful  to 
him.  He  must  possess  the  quality  of  mercy  that 
pertains  to  God.  Now  where  is  he  to  find  that 
mercy  which  is  In  the  nature  of  God?  You  answer, 
and  you  answer  rightly,  in  the  revelation  of  the  life 
of  His  Son,  Jesus  Christ.  But  we  are  still  dealing 
with  a  word.  The  artist  has  still  to  find  the  thing 
itself,  the  mercy  of  the  Christ  in  the  lives  of  human 
beings.  It  calls  him  out  of  his  closet  and  from  his 
books,  back  to  moving  humanity  and  to  the  indi- 
vidual within  this  moving  humanity,  to  experience 
the  mercy  that  is  In  the  nature  of  God,  revealed  in 
Jesus  Christ.  "The  blood  of  Jesus  Christ  cleanses 
men  from  sin."  That  is  a  profound  truth  lying 
at  the  heart  of  life,  but  the  artist  does  not  proceed 
to  take  that  truth  and  try  to  satisfy  the  mind  of  the 
other  man  as  to  its  reasonableness  and  effectiveness. 
His  is  a  much  more  laborious  process  than  that. 
That  statement  is  to  him  a  finger,  pointing  down 
into  the  depths  of  divine  human  life  where  he  must 
go  and  experience  for  himself  the  operation  of  the 
universal  law — how  the  shedding  of  blood  for  others 
can  cleanse  his  own  soul. 

This  guide  post  with  its  pointing  finger  has  stood 
on  the  edge  of  the  world  for  nineteen  hundred  years, 


30  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

and  men  had  come  to  look  at  it,  not  as  a  guide  post, 
but  as  an  altar  with  an  inscription  to  which  they 
could  give  an  intellectual  assent  which  would  in 
some  mysterious  way  cleanse  them  from  their  sins. 
Many  repudiated  it,  until  suddenly  the  earth  was 
moved  and  the  sun  darkened,  and  a  whole  genera- 
tion was  taken  down  deep  into  the  grim  and  re- 
vealing realities  of  life.  In  the  great  war  men 
found  that  what  they  had  considered  a  mere  intel- 
lectual statement  was  a  universal  law  of  life — the 
relation  of  the  shedding  of  blood  to  the  cleansing 
of  the  soul,  and  they  found  the  Christ  of  the  cross 
dying  and  living  in  the  center  of  the  world. 

In  speaking  of  the  artist  preacher's  own  prepara- 
tion for  his  preaching,  I  have  gone  far  enough,  I 
trust,  to  have  you  men  realize  that  the  possession 
of  these  doctrines,  mastered  and  buttressed  by  your 
learning,  is  but  the  beginning  of  your  preparation. 
Each  of  them  has  to  be  illuminated  by  your  own 
personal  experience.  You  must  have  something 
vital  in  you  that  corresponds  and  answers  to  the 
description  that  you  give  of  God  and  the  spiritual 
life.  It  may  be  but  the  flickering  of  a  candle  which 
lights  the  truth  dimly,  but  you  must  see  something 
of  the  truth  in  your  own  nature  before  you  dare  to 
utter  the  truth.  Your  image  must  see  as  God  sees. 
You  must  know  yourself  a  creator,  a  redeemer,  and 
then  you  will  find  yourself  possessed  of  a  power 
which  proceeds  out  of  that  relationship  to  sanctify 
the  life  of  your  fellow  men.  I  am  aware  of  the  fact 
that  this  statement  can  be  twisted  and  misunder- 
stood.    I  know  perfectly  well  that  man  is  not  God, 


The  Artist's   Tools  31 

but  I  know  that  man  can  enter  into  God's  creation 
not  alone  by  being  created  but  by  creating!  that  man 
can  enter  into  Christ's  redemption  not  alone  by 
being  redeemed,  but  by  redeeming!  that  man  can 
enter  Into  the  sanctification  by  the  Holy  Spirit,  not 
alone  by  being  sanctified  but  by  sanctifying. 

I  have  not  tried  to  show  you  what  you  will  find 
by  this  process.  1  have  simply  indicated  the  process 
by  means  of  which  the  artist  prepares  himself  for 
his  preaching.  If  the  artist  is  so  preparing  him- 
self, he  will,  of  course,  find  that  the  Bible  is  his 
handbook.  Just  as  the  artist  sculptor  goes  to 
Greece,  so  does  the  artist  preacher  go  to  Palestine. 
The  spiritual  soil  of  Greece  produced  in  marble  the 
thing  of  beauty  that  is  a  joy  forever.  The  spir- 
itual soil  of  Palestine  produced  in  human  nature  the 
perfect  image  of  God  that  is  a  joy  for  evermore. 
Therefore,  the  sculptor  studies  the  land  of  Greece. 
He  goes  there  for  his  models.  The  actual  soil 
holds  little  interest.  If  he  spends  his  time  learning 
the  geography  and  history,  he  is  an  antiquarian,  not 
an  artist.  If  he  learns  the  language,  he  does  it  not 
as  an  end  but  as  a  means  by  which  he  enters  into  the 
spirit  which  is  Greece.  His  one  question  is,  How 
did  these  people  create  the  things  they  did?  What 
is  the  nature  of  the  soil  that  made  these  things 
grow? 

In  the  same  way  the  artist  preacher  goes  to  Pal- 
estine, which  is  the  Bible,  or  to  the  Bible  which  Is 
Palestine.  He  may  know  the  geography  of  Pales- 
tine, the  names  of  every  mountain  and  town  and 
rlv^er,  and  not  know  anything  of  the  real  Bible.     He 


32  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

may  know  by  heart  all  the  Kings  of  Israel  and  all 
the  wars,  and  still  not  know  anything  of  the  Bible. 
If  he  learns  the  Hebrew  language,  as  every  preacher 
ought  to  learn  it,  it  is  not  as  an  end  but  a  means  by 
which  he  may  catch  some  of  the  spirit  which  is  the 
Hebrew.  The  Bible  is  an  exhibit  showing  how 
the  spirit  working  on  another  spirit  calls  forth  the 
divine  image.  It  is  just  so  many  words  hot  from 
the  blood  of  a  people,  and  these  words  have  to  be 
translated  back  again  into  blood.  The  Hebrews 
started  in  a  dim  way  with  this  fundamental  truth, 
that  God  made  man  in  His  own  image.  They  may 
have  had  a  poor  idea  of  God  and  an  inadequate 
conception  of  His  image.  They  may  not  at  first 
have  been  conscious  of  the  full  truth,  but  they  were 
groping  in  the  right  direction  and  their  history  is  a 
description  of  how  men  through  the  experiences  of 
life  were  shown  how  to  find  the  hidden  image. 
They  blundered,  they  stumbled;  but  they  stumbled 
up  instead  of  down.  They  lost  sight  of  the  true 
image  and  set  up  false  ones,  but  prophetic  voices 
from  within  called  them  back  to  their  quest.  And 
they  went  on  building  up  their  own  spiritual  nature 
and  discovering  a  spiritual  nature  in  the  other  man. 
"Hark  the  dominant  persistence,  till  it  must  be  an- 
swered to.  Then  the  octave  struck  the  answer,"  and 
the  answer  was  Christ,  the  Jesus  of  Bethlehem  and 
Nazareth  and  Capernaum  and  Jerusalem.  The 
Christ,  the  express  image  of  God.  A  large  part 
of  the  Old  Testament  is  a  record  of  mistakes,  of 
how  not  to  find  the  hidden  image.  But  it  is  invalu- 
able because  it  is  a  description  of  mistakes  in  the 


The  Artist's   Tools  33 

right  direction.  The  New  Testament  Is  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  revelation  of  the  true  image,  and  also 
of  how  the  consummate  artist  worked  on  the  hidden 
image  of  the  other  man  to  make  it  see.  And  so 
to  the  artist  preacher  the  Bible  is  indispensable  and 
invaluable,  and  in  fact,  his  all  in  all.  But  it  is  noth- 
ing to  him  but  words  until  he  translates  these  words 
into  life,  in  terms  of  experience.  I  am  speaking  too 
generally  and  I  am  afraid  I  shall  not  be  understood. 
What  1  am  saying  may  be  a  truism.  I  do  not  care 
whether  it  is  or  not.     It  is  in  any  case  all  important. 

The  Bible  is  a  revelation  of  God's  image,  and  this 
revelation  was  given  to  men  through  their  daily  ex- 
periences,^^ — fighting,  hating,  loving,  killing,  blessing, 
eating,  drinking,  buying,  selling,  living,  dying.  And 
this  revelation  was  put  into  words,  preserved  in 
words.  But  man  does  not  receive  the  revelation 
that  the  words  preserve  until  he  enters  into  the 
experience  by  which  the  revelation  came.  "Blessed 
are  the  peace-makers"  is  a  truth  preserved  in  words. 
It  is  a  revelation  from  God.  You  do  not  receive 
the  revelation  until  you  yourself  are  a  peace-maker. 
In  other  words,  you  do  not  obtain  a  revelation  and 
then  proceed  to  be  something;  you  are  something, 
and  by  so  being  you  receive  the  revelation.  The 
preacher  who  does  not  have  a  definition  of  peace 
made  out  of  his  own  experiences  ought  not  to  preach 
peace.  He  has  not  received  the  revelation  from 
God  that  entitles  him  to  preach,  although  he  may 
have  the  Bible  in  his  hand  with  his  finger  on  the 
chapter  and  the  verse. 

In  my  boyhood,  we  used  to  have  maps  of  the  dif- 


34  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

ferent  parts  of  the  world,  bound  in  what  we  called 
an  atlas.  We  studied  it  on  Monday  through  Friday 
with  a  vacation  on  Saturday.  And  on  Sunday  we 
had  an  atlas  of  Palestine,  to  our  minds  entirely  dif- 
ferent and  unrelated.  A  place,  if  it  was  a  place  at 
all,  situated  somewhere  between  earth  and  heaven. 
And  now  General  AUenby  has  ridden  triumphantly 
through  Bethlehem  and  Jerusalem  and  has  placed 
Palestine  on  the  map  of  the  world.  In  the  same 
manner,  the  truths  that  grew  out  of  the  soil  of  Pal- 
estine, looked  upon  as  something  separate  and  apart, 
unrelated  to  the  truths  growing  out  of  other  soils, 
have  been  found  to  be  the  revelation  of  the  laws 
and  principles  running  through  all  life.  The  In- 
carnation and  the  Atonement  have  been  placed  on 
the  map  of  the  world.  The  Bible  is  a  description 
of  what  is  going  on  now !  We  have  been  speaking 
of  the  preparation  of  the  preacher  for  his  preach- 
ing, of  the  necessity  of  the  preacher  artist's  having 
an  unconquerable  conviction  that  the  divine  image 
is  in  every  man,  and  also  the  necessity  of  the  artist's 
having  a  realization  of  the  image  in  himself,  expe- 
riencing in  himself  the  character  of  God  in  whose 
image  he  is,  and  possessing  a  handbook  which  when 
translated  into  experience  can  show  him  how  spirit 
can  communicate  itself  to  spirit,  to  make  the  hidden 
image  see. 

An  artist,  so  prepared,  is  ready  to  take  up  his 
tools  and  go  to  work.  A  preacher  is  to  convey, 
hy  means  of  words,  his  spirit  to  the  spirits  of  other 
men  to  make  the  image  hidden  within  them  see — 
by   means    of   words.     Every   preacher   before    he 


The  Artist's   Tools  35 

begins  to  write  his  first  sermon  ought  to  have  a  thor- 
ough course  in  Browning's,  "The  Ring  and  the 
Book,"  to  learn  the  value  of  words.  And  before 
every  sermon  the  artist  preacher  should  read  the 
conclusion : 

"So,  British  public,  this  lesson. 
That  our  human  speech  is  naught, 
Our  human  testimony  false,  our  fame 
And  human  estimation,  words  and  wind. 
Why  take  the  artistic  way  to  prove  so  much? 
Because  it  is  the  glory  and  good  of  art, 
That  art  remains  the  one  way  possible 
Of  speaking  truth,  to  mouths  like  mine,  at  least. 
How  look  a  brother  in  the  face  and  say 
Thy  right  is  wrong,  eyes  hast  thou,  yet  art  blind. 
Thine  ears  are  stuffed  and  stopped,  despite  their 

length. 
And  oh,  the  foolishness,  thou  countest  faith. 
Say  this  as  silvery  as  tongue  can  troll — 
The  anger  of  the  man  may  be  endured. 
The  shrug,  the  disappointed  eyes  of  him 
Are  not  so  bad  to  bear — but  here's  the  plague 
That  all  this  trouble  comes  of  telling  truth. 
Which  truth,  by  when  it  reaches  him  looks  false, 
Seems  to  be  just  the  thing  it  would  supplant, 
Nor  recognizable  by  whom  it  left 
While  falsehood  would  have  done  the  work  of 

truth 
But  art — wherein  man  nowise  speaks  to  men 
Only  to  mankind — art  may  tell  a  truth 
Obhquely,  do  the  thing  shall  breed  the  thought 
Nor  wrong  the  thought,  missing  the  mediate  word 
So  may  you  paint  your  picture,  twice  show  truth 


36  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

Beyond  mere  imagery  on  the  wall — 

So,  note  by  note,  bring  music  from  your  mind, 

Deeper  than  e'en  Beethoven  divined, 

So  write  a  book  shall  mean  beyond  the  facts 

Suffice  the  eye  and  save  the  soul  beside." 

And  this  brings  us  around  the  circle  to  what  we 
said  at  the  beginning.  The  sermon  is  but  a  tool 
and  should  be  approached  and  worked  upon  as  a 
tool.  The  art  of  the  preacher  does  not  consist  in 
making  sentences  or  literature,  or  constructing  a 
sermon  according  to  a  perfect  model.  His  art  con- 
sists in  so  using  his  sermon  that  it  will  convey  spirit 
to  the  spirit  of  the  other  man,  to  make  his  hidden 
image  see.  The  artist  has  the  image  of  God  and 
not  the  sermon  tool  in  mind.  Now,  what  I  am 
going  to  say,  I  beg  of  you  not  to  take  too  liter- 
ally. I  am  depending  on  the  fact  that  you  possess 
imagination.  If  you  have  not  imagination  you  can 
never  be  a  good  preacher.  I  am  going  to  describe 
a  process.  My  description  and  explanation  of  the 
process  may  be  in  many  respects  wrong,  but  the 
process  I  know  to  be  right.  A  wireless  station  in 
this  country  conveys  a  message  to  Paris.  I  may 
not  be  accurate  in  my  explanation  of  how  it  is  done, 
but  that  it  is  done  there  can  be  no  doubt.  You  are 
starting  to  write  a  sermon,  and  I  emphasize  write, 
because  every  preacher  ought  to  write  one  sermon 
a  week  for  certainly  ten  years.  You  have  become 
aware  of  the  pathetic,  tragic,  moving  multitude;  you 
have  had  one  instance  of  human  blindness  brought 
home  to  you,  and  you  have  brought  it  home  into 
your  workshop.     You  have  within  yourself  a  real- 


The  Artistes   Tools  37 

ization  of  the  Image  of  God.  And  you  see  It  In 
the  other  man  and  want  to  make  his  hidden  Image 
come  forth.  Out  of  a  Book  you  take  words  which 
have  sprung  out  of  the  blood  of  human  experience, 
revealing  the  healing  properties  and  regenerating 
principles  that  are  In  the  heart  of  God,  and  you 
translate  them  back  Into  your  own  experience,  and 
the  spiritual  meaning  Is  revealed  to  you.  After 
that,  you  have  to  translate  that  spirit  back  again 
into  your  own  words,  dipped  In  blood,  that  have  a 
special  bearing  upon  the  Immediate  case  before  you, 
so  that  with  every  word  you  utter  there  goes  the 
corresponding  spirit.  With  every  word  you  utter 
there  goes  the  corresponding  spirit.  Your  princi- 
pal attention  Is  fastened  upon  the  image  hid  within 
the  other  man.  Your  chief  object  Is  to  make  It  see. 
Before  you  do  that,  you  have  to  use  your  tool, 
your  sermon,  In  such  a  manner  that  you  catch  the 
man's  attention  and  arouse  his  Interest  and  awaken 
his  mind.  It  may  be  by  the  skill  of  your  sentences, 
or  your  apt  Illustrations.  You  have  to  deal  with 
a  certain  amount  of  resisting  and  recalcitrant  stone. 
And  that  Is  where  the  right  construction  of  your 
tool  comes  in.  Work  on  your  tool  until  it  does  per- 
fect work,  but  beware  lest  you  spend  your  time  on 
unnecessary  adornment.  See  that  the  tool  cuts  the 
stone,  but  do  not  spend  valuable  time  on  the  polish- 
ing of  the  handle,  for  all  this  Is  preliminary  and  sub- 
sidiary. Your  tool  Is  to  cut  away  the  surrounding 
and  resisting  material,  but  It  Is  also  to  fashion  the 
Image,  or  awaken  the  Image  so  that  It  may  see.  And 
that  Is  where  the  spirit  that  accompanies  the  words 


38  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

does  its  work.  The  spirit  sometimes  goes  with  the 
word,  sometimes  ahead  of  it;  it  touches  hidden 
springs  in  unexpected  ways,  it  receives  our  orders 
and  disobeys  them,  it  obeys  laws  which  we  do  not 
yet  understand  and  cooperates  with  forces  that  are 
far  beyond  us,  it  forges  its  own  invisible  tools  and 
works  on  the  image  in  imperceptible  ways,  and  the 
image  is  built  to  music  and  therefore  never  built, 
and  therefore  built  forever. 

If  you  will  put  the  spirit  into  the  word,  the  word, 
as  Browning  says,  may  mean  to  the  man  just  the 
opposite  from  what  it  meant  to  you;  but  the  spirit 
interprets  it  and  works  in  its  own  way.  You  will 
be  surprised  to  find  in  a  real  sermon  how  little  the 
words  count.  They  are  absolutely  necessary  and 
they  must  be  the  right  words  in  the  right  place  and 
mean  something.  But  the  real  art  of  the  preacher 
is  to  tip  the  point  of  the  word  with  spirit  and  let 
that  spirit  fashion  in  its  own  way  the  man  and  make 
him  see.  It  may  not  reach  the  image  of  the  man 
in  your  workshop,  you  may  never  know  whom  it 
does  reach  and  fashion,  but  you  can  know  this — 
that  if  the  word  is  tipped  with  spirit  in  the  way  we 
have  described,  that  spirit  is  bound  to  form  the 
power  to  see  in  some  image  of  God.  Any  blindness 
in  any  man  is  the  entrance  into  the  universal  nature 
of  man,  through  which  the  word  tipped  with  spirit 
can  enter  to  make  blind  eyes  see.  Write  your 
sermon,  direct  your  tool  to  the  man  in  your  work- 
shop, see  that  your  work  is  tipped  with  spirit,  and 
leave  the  rest  to  God.  You  will  never  see  the  re- 
sult of  your  artistry,  as  the  sculptor  sees  the  image 


The  Artist's   Tools  39 

he  has  hewn  out  of  the  stone,  but  it  exists  somewhere, 
If  you  have  tipped  your  word  with  fire. 

The  operation  of  spiritual  laws  Is  Inevitable  and 
inexorable.  Given  a  word  freighted  with  the  spirit, 
that  word  will  go  to  its  destination,  and  the  spirit 
will  surely  touch  the  blinded  soul  and  the  blinded 
soul  will  surely  see. 

We  have  seen  in  what  way  the  artist  must  put 
his  spirit  Into  the  word.  And  now  we  come  to  the 
method  of  Jesus,  the  consummate  artist,  in  working 
upon  His  material,  which  method  we  touched  upon 
at  the  close  of  our  first  lecture.  This  is  most  im- 
portant, and  if  you  will  get  hold  of  the  idea  it  will 
affect  your  preaching  all  the  days  of  your  life.  Here 
is  a  man,  let  us  say,  John,  In  Jesus'  workshop,  with 
the  Image  of  God  hidden  within  him.  Jesus  was 
to  take  that  son  of  thunder  and  make  him  know 
himself  the  Son  of  God.  He  was  to  change  the 
spirit  of  adventure  into  an  adventure  of  the  spirit, 
so  that  John  might  see.  Now  John  was  a  frail 
mortal  and  needed  help;  he  was  ignorant  and  needed 
knowledge;  a  sinner,  he  needed  forgiveness,  and 
Jesus  stood  In  His  workshop  between  the  Image 
hidden  within  the  nature  of  John  and  the  infinite 
Inexhaustible  resources  stored  up  in  the  living  God. 
Jesus  stood  between  the  Giver  and  the  prospective 
recipient  of  the  gift,  with  the  gift  in  His  hand.  I 
ask  you  to  picture  John  facing  Jesus  with  hands 
outstretched  to  receive  the  gift  of  the  spirit  of  the 
image,  and  then  I  ask  you  to  have  this  act  of  Jesus 
burned  forever  on  your  mind.  Jesus  took  John, 
who  was  facing  Him  to  receive  the  gift,  and  turned 


40  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

him  around,  turned  him  around  completely,  making 
him  face  in  the  direction  that  Jesus  faced,  and  so 
making  John  receive  the  gift  in  the  only  way  that 
it  could  be  received, — by  making  John  a  giver. 
That  is  one  of  the  critical  moments  in  the  history 
of  the  world,  when  John  was  turned  around — when 
he  no  longer  faced  Jesus  with  his  hands  stretched 
out  to  receive,  but  walked  with  Jesus  with  his  hands 
stretched  out  to  his  fellows  to  give.  And  I  beg 
you  to  notice  this,  that  John  did  not  turn  around 
because  he  saw,  but  Jesus  turned  him  around  in 
order  to  make  him  see. 

This  is  so  fundamental  and  important  that  we 
must  dwell  upon  it.  If  you  give  a  man  a  book, 
that  book  is  an  expression  of  your  giving  nature. 
The  man  facing  you  has  received  a  thing,  a  book, 
but  he  has  not  received  your  giving  nature  which 
is  God's  nature,  until  he  turns  around,  and  walks 
with  you  and  gives  himself,  and  then,  and  only 
then,  he  receives  and  knows  in  that  giving  as- 
pect your  image  and  the  image  of  God.  You,  a 
teacher,  give  a  man  a  truth.  He  has  not  received 
it  until  he  himself  becomes  a  teacher  and  can  ex- 
press and  give  that  truth,  which  is  God's  truth. 
You,  a  preacher,  tell  a  man  that  needs  mercy  that 
God  is  merciful.  You  have  not  given  that  man 
anything.  He  has  not  received  anything  until  you, 
an  artist,  have  in  some  way  turned  that  man 
around  and  made  him  a  merciful  man,  and  then,  and 
only  then,  has  he  received  the  quality  of  mercy 
which  is  an  aspect  of  the  image  of  God.  A  man 
does  not  receive  mercy  and  then  go  forth  to  give  it. 


The  Artisfs   Tools  41 

He  does  not  receive  It  until  he  gives  It.  A  man 
comes  to  a  preacher  and  faces  him,  asking  for  God's 
forgiveness,  and  the  preacher  cannot  give  him  for- 
giveness until,  becoming  an  artist,  he  turns  him 
around  and  makes  that  man  a  forglver,  and  then, 
and  only  then,  does  that  man's  Image  know  Itself  to 
be  made  In  the  Image  of  a  forgiving  God. 

A  man  In  sorrow  stands  before  a  preacher  crying 
out  for  comfort,  and  the  artist  puts  God's  comfort 
Into  the  man's  nature  by  making  him  a  comforter. 
That  was  the  method  of  the  fine  art  of  Jesus.  He 
chose  a  man  out  of  the  multitude  and  took  him  Into 
His  workshop,  taught  him  God's  truth  by  making 
him  a  teacher  of  God's  truth.  And  the  man  taught 
and  saw.  He  brought  God's  help  to  man  by  mak- 
ing the  man  a  helper  and  the  man  helped  and  the 
Image  of  God  within  him  saw  still  more.  He 
brought  the  forgiveness  of  God  to  a  man  suffering 
for  his  sins  by  making  a  man  suffer  In  forgiving 
other  men's  sins.  And  the  man  suffered  and  the 
Image  of  God  within  him  could  see  still  more.  And 
the  man  was  tested  by  fire  and  came  out  of  the 
crucible,  a  creator,  a  redeemer  and  a  comforter  of 
men,  seeing  the  Invisible  world  of  the  spirit  In  which 
he  lived. 

It  Is  all  summed  up  In  this  principle  of  Jesus.  He 
made  the  Individual  give  help  to  the  multitude  not 
primarily  for  the  sake  of  the  multitude  but  for  the 
sake  of  the  Individual. 

If  a  preacher  becomes  an  artist  and  follows  the 
method  of  Jesus,  his  sermons  take  on  a  different 
character.     If  he  Is  preaching  to  the  sorrowful,  he 


42  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

does  not  say  words  of  comfort  (that  is  compara- 
tively easy).  He  creates  an  atmosphere  which 
calls  for  and  produces  pity  and  mercy  in  the  sor- 
rowful soul,  and  lo,  the  sorrow  disappears.  But 
I  can  not  stop  to  pursue  this  thought.  I  only  say 
that  the  character  of  the  sermon  changes  the  mo- 
ment the  preacher  becomes  the  artist  and  follows 
the  method  of  Jesus,  when  he  thinks  of  men,  not  as 
facing  him  but  as  walking  with  him.  Whenever 
you  are  about  to  begin  a  sermon  and  you  have  in 
mind  some  pathetic  face  out  of  the  multitude  look- 
ing up  appealingly  into  your  face,  do  not  begin  your 
sermon  until  you  have  turned  that  man  around,  and 
think  of  him  as  going  with  you,  and  I  promise  you 
that  the  character  of  your  sermon  will  be  very  dif- 
ferent. If  you  talk  to  John  when  he  Is  facing  you, 
you  are  trying  to  make  him  see  through  the  back 
of  his  head.  But  If  you  will  turn  John  around,  your 
conversation  will  be  spared  many  unnecessary  argu- 
ments, for  he  will  see  what  you  are  seeing,  and  what 
is  more,  he  will  see  with  his  own  eyes. 

In  treating  preaching  as  a  fine  art,  you  may  say 
that  I  have  dwelt  upon  the  artist  preacher  In  the 
marketplace,  jostled  and  hurt  by  the  moving  mul- 
titude, and  In  his  closet  with  his  God,  and  in  his 
study  with  his  book,  and  with  his  man  with  the 
Image  hidden  within  him,  and  that  I  have  seemed 
oblivious  of  the  fact  that  there  was  such  a  thing  as 
a  pulpit  where  a  preacher  is  supposed  to  stand  and 
preach  to  a  number  of  people  called  a  congregation 
sitting  in  the  pews. 

No,  I  have  not  forgotten.     It  has  been  in  my 


The  Artistes   Tools  43 

mind  through  everything  I  have  said.  The  pulpit 
is  the  preacher's  throne,  which  he  may  ascend 
only  as  he  shows  his  royal  blood  and  the  right  of 
succession.  If  his  credentials  are  merely  a  literary 
masterpiece,  wrought  with  perfect  art  in  his  fully 
equipped  library,  to  be  delivered  with  the  silver 
tongue  of  an  orator,  he  cannot  enter  there.  But 
if  he  stands  at  the  steps  of  the  pulpit  in  the  spirit 
of  an  artist,  with  a  vision  that  comes  with  the  real- 
ization of  the  image  of  God  within  him,  and  a  con- 
suming and  over-mastering  passion  to  bring  out  that 
image  in  the  other  man;  if  he  comes  sweating,  as  it 
were,  drops  of  blood  from  the  dashing  of  himself 
against  a  hard,  cruel,  cold  humanity,  with  the  un- 
conquerable faith  that  never  forgets  the  image 
within  the  stone;  if  he  has  heard  some  particular 
cry  and  has  wrestled  with  an  individual  man  to  turn 
him  around  and  make  him  see,  then  the  doors  of  the 
pulpit  are  thrown  open  to  him  and  he  ascends  his 
throne  with  power,  a  throne  that  no  other  artist 
dare  ascend,  for  the  materials  are  living  souls,  and 
the  tools  are  words  tipped  with  spirit,  and  the  pur- 
pose is  participation  in  the  creation  of  the  image  of 
God. 

There  is  nothing  equal  to  its  terrible  respon- 
sibility. Before  him  are  invisible  images  in  all 
stages  of  development,  waiting  for  the  authoritative 
touch.  About  him  are  unseen  armies  of  creative 
spirits,  waiting  for  the  authoritative  command; 
walls  and  roofs  disappear,  and  earth  and  sky  are 
rolled  up  like  a  scroll,  and  the  preacher  stands  with 
these  images  of  God  before  him  in  a  spiritual  world, 


44  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

based  on  eternal  principles  and  governed  by  eternal 
law.  What  shall  issue  from  the  preacher  out  of 
the  eternal  silence?  That  which  came  forth  at  the 
beginning,  a  word,  but  a  word  made  flesh  and  living 
among  us,  a  word  that  has  agonized  and  bled  and 
died  and  come  to  life  again,  a  word  born  of  the 
spirit.  And  the  word  with  the  wings  of  the  spirit 
flies  with  an  unerring  instinct  to  the  image  that  is 
crying  for  its  touch.  And  because  of  the  preacher's 
word,  the  man  sees,  not  perhaps  the  one  the  artist 
has  worked  upon,  not  in  the  way  he  would  have 
chosen,  but  inevitably,  surely,  the  spirit  finds  its  way. 
You  shoot  an  arrow  into  the  air;  it  falls  to  earth 
you  know  not  where.  So  will  that  word  of  the 
spirit  find  and  do  its  work  in  some  son  of  God. 

If  a  preacher  really  seizes  hold  of  a  spiritual 
principle,  he  need  not  go  afield  for  his  symbols  and 
illustrations,  for  with  every  spiritual  principle  the 
inevitable  symbol  waits  close  at  hand.  If  you  do 
not  find  the  symbol  waiting  for  you,  it  is  a  sign  that 
you  have  not  grasped  the  principle.  Here,  for  in- 
stance, is  the  law  of  the  hungry  soul  and  the  truth 
of  the  life  that  feeds  it.  And  here,  not  far  afield, 
but  close  to  it,  bound  in  it,  is  the  inevitable  symbol 
of  the  bread  and  wine. 

Any  word  that  the  preacher  may  utter,  born  In 
spirit  and  in  blood,  will  find  its  Inevitable  symbol, 
and  it  will  also  be  related  to  all  other  words  with 
their  separate  content,  and  will  link  itself  with  the 
universal  scheme  of  things,  the  law  and  principles 
of  creation  and  redemption  and  judgment. 


The  Artist's   Tools  45 

Any  one  who  stands  in  the  Sistine  Chapel  in  Rome 
will  see  above  him  Michael  Angelo's  idea  of  the 
creation,  God,  the  artist,  with  beings  in  the  folds  of 
His  garment,  representing  relationship  and  abun- 
dant life,  stretching  out  his  hand  and  touching  the 
image  of  man  to  create  it  in  the  image  of  God.  And 
at  the  eastern  end  of  the  Chapel  is  the  great  picture 
of  the  Day  of  Judgment  with  men  made  in  the  image 
of  God  faUing  and  rising,  and  all  around  the  walls 
is  the  story  of  the  life  of  Christ,  from  the  cradle 
to  the  Cross,  and  from  the  Cross  to  the  Ascension. 

But  it  is  all  together,  bound  together  in  the  one 
and  the  same  room.  And  if  you  stop  before  the 
cradle  to  tell  about  that,  behind  it  is  the  creation 
and  beside  it  the  crucifixion,  before  it  is  the  Judg- 
ment. The  whole  sweep  of  God's  purposes  and 
plans  is  poured  into  the  picture  of  the  cradle.  Any 
word  that  you  as  an  artist  utter  (if  it  is  worth  any- 
thing at  all,  and  if  it  is  not,  then  God  have  mercy 
on  your  soul),  any  word  you  preach  that  is  worth 
anything  at  all  has  behind  it  God's  eternal  creation, 
and  within  it  the  Cross,  and  before  it  the  Judgment 
of  a  living,  loving  God. 

The  tale  is  as  old  as  the  Eden  Tree,  as 

New  as  the  new  cut  tooth. 
For  each  man  knows  e'er  his  lip  thatch  grows. 

He  is  master  of  wit  and  truth. 
And  each  man  hears  as  the  twilight  nears 

To  the  beat  of  the  dying  heart 
The  Devil  drum  on  the  darkened  pane.     You 

Did  it,  but  was  it  art? 


46  Preaching  as  a  Fine  Art 

We  have  learned  to  whittle  the  Eden 

Tree  to  the  shape  of  a  surplice-peg. 
We  have  learned  to  bottle  our  parents  twain 

In  the  yoke  of  an  addled  egg. 
We  know  that  the  tail  must  wag  the  dog, 

As  the  horse  is  drawn  by  the  cart 
But  the  devil  whoops  as  he  whoops  of  old 

It's  clever,  but  is  it  art? 

No,  it  is  not  art.  And  that  is  why  so  much 
preaching  is  a  woful,  sinful  failure.  You  are  a  mas- 
ter of  art.  Quit  from  this  moment  being  satisfied 
with  the  polishing  of  your  tool.  See  the  need  and 
hear  the  cry  of  a  suffering  humanity,  as  expressed 
in  the  individual.  Find  the  answer  in  terms  of  life, 
as  expressed  in  Jesus  Christ.  Suffer  as  an  artist 
must  suffer.  Agonize.  Shed  your  blood,  and  the 
spirit  of  the  Eternal  God  will  pour  through  you  to 
touch  the  spirit  of  the  other  man;  and  it  will  be  given 
you  what  to  say;  and  you  will  speak  with  the  tongue 
of  angels.  Each  one  of  you  here  can  be  a  great 
preacher,  if  each  in  your  separate  star  you  will  form 
in  some  other  life  the  image  of  God  as  you  see  it 
and  feel  it  and  know  it,  for  the  God  of  things  as 
they  are. 

That's  art.     Amen.     So  be  it. 


Date  Due 

^e    7  ^  -r 

t 

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